Android 15 has entered the final phase of developer testing, and in the coming months a beta version will finally be released to the masses. So far, in the two Developer Preview versions that Google has released, we’ve come across a handful of new features that will make life easier for smartphone users in significant ways.
Among them is a notification cooling system that protects you from a series of audible alerts from your apps. Google has already detailed the changelog to a healthy extent, but not all the new tricks have been implemented yet. But there’s still plenty to unpack in Android 15, and some of those notable additions are detailed below:
Partial screen sharing
This is one of the more thoughtful privacy-focused plugins, one that saves you the hassle of cutting out unnecessary bits in your screenshot videos or even asking you to redo the whole effort. Before starting the native screen recording feature, the app asks you to select which app you want to include in the recording.
After starting video recording with the selected application, the video will show only the activity from that application. If you switch to multitasking and access different applications while recording, these activities will not be recorded or displayed in the final video.
Notification cooling
I wrote a detailed breakdown of this feature in our Android 15 first impressions article and there hasn’t been a day since that it hasn’t come to my rescue. This feature groups all simultaneous notifications from each app into a neat set. The first notification comes in with a full sound alert, but after that each new alert from the same app lowers the volume step by step.
This way, it becomes easier to disconnect — or at least not as annoying as having the same ping sound like an endless audible wait. You can choose to apply it on an app-by-app basis or just for chats like the legendary chats that take place in Instagram groups or gaming-focused Discord chats.
The keyboard is muted
Android 15 introduces a new keyboard vibration toggle that can mute tactile feedback only while typing on the keyboard. The rest of the time, you’ll feel the vibration for tasks like using navigation gestures, unlocking your device, notification alerts, and more.
The feature is also directly linked to the “Haptic feedback on keypress” option in the Gboard settings section, meaning you control the haptic behavior from within Gboard or by visiting the Settings app directly.
Easier Bluetooth controls
In its current iteration, Android 14 offers a Bluetooth tile in the Quick Settings panel. You can enable or disable it with a single tap, while a long press opens the dedicated Bluetooth page on the Settings page. Things work a little differently in Android 15, and for good reasons—especially for scenarios where multiple devices are connected to your phone.
In Android 15, when you tap the Bluetooth tile, a pop-up window opens. There you will see a switch to turn Bluetooth on or off. Below it will be a list of all connected and saved devices, as well as an option to start the pairing process for a new device.
A gear icon corresponding to each device takes you to a dedicated accessories page where you can hang up, forget and play with features like Find My, Spatial Audio, HD audio outputs and more.
Audio sharing
Another neat addition is the new audio sharing feature that appears at the top of the “Connected Devices” page in the Settings app. Google says it lets “others listen to your media with you using their compatible headphones.”
Unfortunately, this feature does not appear to be functional at this time. The goal is clear — to allow more users to stream an audio file from the source device, which sounds great for enjoying content with friends and family on a tablet or simply playing a Spotify song together.
There is a silver lining to accessibility that will allow users to more effectively communicate what they want to say to a loved one who relies on hearing aids. However, we don’t know how many devices will support audio stream sharing.
HD webcam in your pocket
When Google released the first version of Android 14 QPR, it enabled a new feature that allows users to turn their Android phone into a webcam. I’ve used this feature a lot, especially in scenarios where the light is sub-optimal and phone sensors can offer much better output than a laptop’s built-in webcam.
But Google still kept it locked at a lower resolution. In Android 15, when you connect your phone to your computer in webcam mode and see a preview on your phone’s screen, there is now a new HD option. Tapping on it offers a significant improvement in clarity, sharpness and noise reduction.
Archiving the application
One of the biggest pain points of installing heavy games and emulator files is that they’ll just sit there and eat up storage space if you’re not proactive. Android 15 is about to offer a respite, thanks to a new iPhone-inspired app archiving feature.
Just long press the app icon, tap the info button and you’ll see a new Archive option. This feature wipes a healthy bunch of assets and keeps only a rudimentary version of the app stored on your phone without uninstalling. The next time you want to access the app, just press the “Restore” button and wait for the missing files to be downloaded from the Play Store in the background.
It doesn’t seem to work properly on another Android 15 developer build. A few sideloaded apps support app archiving, while others simply don’t show the archiving option. But it seems to be fully functional for apps downloaded from the Google Play store.
More reliable NFC
Google says that on compatible devices, apps can make the NFC feature just listen without responding to NFC scanners while still sending information that the app needs to process. This should make using NFC on your phone easier and more convenient. NFC generally works well on Android phones, but sometimes you may have to try multiple times to get it to connect.
I often encountered those “Please tap again” or “Looks like it needs a reboot” moments in stores. With Android 15, these problems should be greatly reduced. This is great not only for contactless payments, but also for Android digital car keys and hotel gates.
Satellite connection
As satellite connectivity on Android moves closer to a wide release, especially with initiatives like the T-Mobile and SpaceX partnership, Android 15 also continues to evolve system resources and change the user interface. One of them allows the system to know when a device is using a satellite connection.
Android 15 opens the door to messaging and multimedia messaging apps, including those that come pre-installed for RCS (Rich Communication Services) enabled conversations, allowing them to send and receive messages over satellite links. Depending on the available wavelength, this should provide a much better experience than simple location sharing and texting.
Better PDF experiences
Interacting with a PDF file on Android phones is not the easiest experience because it usually relies on third-party apps, and most of them often don’t offer advanced features to get the job done. That hassle is about to end with several native PDF file integrations that bring features like in-file search and annotations to users.
“Apps may include advanced features such as displaying password-protected files, comments, form editing, search and selection with copy,” Google says. Google is pushing linearized PDF optimizations that not only reduce the load on system resources when interacting with PDF files, but also make the whole process more fluid.
Small screens are getting more love
With Android 12L, Google started making bold UI optimizations focused on the fold to take advantage of larger internal screens like tablets. However, the company hasn’t done much to improve the situation for clamshell-style flip phones, which often come with a smaller clamshell display in a variety of shapes and sizes.
This kept the small screen experience quite limited, prompting foldable phone enthusiasts to use hacks like CoverScreen OS to run full apps. Yes, not all apps work as expected, and they shouldn’t. But a little flexibility here could have gone a long way.
Android 15 addresses that shortcoming by allowing developers to enable the use of the title screen for their apps. “These screens are too small to be considered compatible targets for Android apps to work on, but your app can choose to support them,” the company says.
Performance improvements
Google provides a set of APIs called the Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) that allow developers to monitor the thermal status of their applications, offer incentives to apply the best performance settings, and enable game-specific optimizations.
ADPF is like a secret toolbox that allows video games and other power-hungry apps to talk to Android devices’ power and cooling systems. With these tools, you can monitor how your Android performs under pressure and adjust your game to play well, keeping things cool and avoiding crashes.
In Android 15, Google is adding support for a new power efficiency mode that will direct apps to use power-efficient resource profiles while offering the flexibility to dip into CPU and GPU resources for demanding workloads like games.
Screen capture detection
Android 15 also adds a new awareness feature that will tell apps if screen activity is being recorded. If users are doing something private, such as working with personal information or banking-related tasks, and screen recording is enabled, users will be notified that their activity is being recorded.
Users can be notified via an in-app alert or a separate notification, telling them that their interactions are being watched or saved. This helps clear things up and builds trust in their privacy. It could be useful not only for troubleshooting technical issues, but also as a security measure against activity-logging malware.
Do Not Disturb Upgrades
When you enable Do Not Disturb mode on your phone, the intent is clear: you don’t want apps and notifications to disturb you. But sometimes we need a stricter approach that forces us to actively avoid reaching for our phone, or when we simply need to rest our eyes for a bit before falling asleep.
Android 15 will offer just that kind of flexibility. Google is adding a new ZenDeviceEffects customization rule that will allow Do Not Disturb to enable effects like night mode, background dimming, and grayscale mode for the screen at the same time. There will be more flexibility in applying DND mode, and automatic situational awareness will also be part of the enhancement package.
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